Toshiba external hdd runs very slow

[egbishop]

I own an Acer laptop computer with 4 MB of ram and 350 gigabyte hard drive. I purchased a Toshiba canvio 750 GB extra hard drive. The external hard drive takes 4 hours to back up the hard drive on the computer. My question. Is this normal or do I have a problem? I also own a HP desktop computer. I have a Toshiba 750 gb external hard drive attached to it for backup. It takes about an hour for this hard drive to back up my pc. Between the two the laptop is very slow for backup and the PC is very fast. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

 

[ksiemb]

I own an Acer laptop computer with 4 MB of ram and 350 gigabyte hard drive. I purchased a Toshiba canvio 750 GB extra hard drive. The external hard drive takes 4 hours to back up the hard drive on the computer. My question. Is this normal or do I have a problem? I also own a HP desktop computer. I have a Toshiba 750 gb external hard drive attached to it for backup. It takes about an hour for this hard drive to back up my pc. Between the two the laptop is very slow for backup and the PC is very fast. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

Directly proportional to transfer rates of USB and hard drives of both computers, and amount of files/date you are backing up. Research your system specs for both machines.

 

[cbrunnem]

i would assume the amount backed up on the laptop was about 3-4 times more then the desktop.

is this external hard drive usb3 by chance?

 

[egbishop]

Both external hard drives are Toshiba canvio 750 GB USB 3.0
The amount that is backed up on a PC is 200 GB.
The amount that is backed up on the laptop is 82 gigabyte. Both computers are working normal. I have not had any problem with the normal functions of the computers. I just don't understand why it takes so much longer for the laptop to download to the external hard drive and storing less files and the PC. Thank you for your reply. Any more suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[cbrunnem]

are you using the usb 3 ports on either one?

 

[egbishop]

yes, both are plugged in directly to a usb port

 

[cbrunnem]

no no not what i asked. there are two main types of usb ports used today. usb2 and usb3, usb3 is considerably faster and could make the difference between the two times. a usb3 port will have blue plastic not white. also a desktops processor will be able to faster transfer small files.

 

[Pyree]

Enable write cache, update USB 3.0 driver.

 

[egbishop]

no no not what i asked. there are two main types of usb ports used today. usb2 and usb3, usb3 is considerably faster and could make the difference between the two times. a usb3 port will have blue plastic not white. also a desktops processor will be able to faster transfer small files.

Both cables that came with the external hard drives have the blue plastic, USB Port. I checked both computers but I cannot see the blue or white on the female USB Port. I'm going to run a backup on both computers this Tuesday AM and we'll see what happens. Thank you

 

[Pyree]

Also check if the port is marked with "ss" for superspeed usb 3.0.

If the desktop has a usb 3.0 port and the laptop only has usb 2.0 port, that would nicely explain the difference. You need both usb 3.0 host and device to get usb 3.0 speed.

 

[egbishop]

I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this problem. I was able to get new software from Toshiba and download it. The new software did find some files that were corrupted. I am convinced that the laptop will just simply run slower than the HP PC. Thanks to all and maybe someday I can help you.

 

[cbrunnem]

I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this problem. I was able to get new software from Toshiba and download it. The new software did find some files that were corrupted. I am convinced that the laptop will just simply run slower than the HP PC. Thanks to all and maybe someday I can help you.

well list the specs of both computers and we can varify that. be sure to include hard drive info

 

[egbishop]

Laptop his Acer model 5517. Processor is AMD AThion 64x2 tk-42 dual core.
Memory is four GB. Hard drive is 250 GB. Hitachi ATA devise.
Desktop is a Hewlett Packard, model S 5710 F. Processor is an AMD athion 260 dual core. Memory six GB. Hard drive 640 gigabytes Hitachi sata disk device.

Basically I'm a novice. If you need anything else please be clear with your questions as to where I should look for the information. Thank you

 

[egbishop]

By the way, I backed up both the PC and laptop. The PC took about 40 minutes, the laptop to report 2 hours. The laptop is about 50% faster now. So it is better.